Charente: 10 to 18 years in prison for three Angoulême supporters who hit and raped one of their own

Three supporters of the Angoulême amateur football club, aged between 24 and 40, were sentenced Tuesday in Charente to sentences ranging from 10 to 18 years in prison for having martyred, assaulted and raped one of their own. They were tried by the juvenile court, since at the time of the facts, committed between 2015 and 2017, one of them was under 18 years old.

The victim, a 52-year-old man, was declared disabled following this trauma. He was, like them, part of the “Commando Fada”, a former association of supporters of the Angoulême club then playing in the fifth division (CFA2).

“The court gave me back my dignity. It was long, but when I see the pain, it’s fair.” he told the press. The forty-year-old Yann Chabernaud, ex-member of the National Front, was sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment in accordance with the requisitions of the attorney general. Jérôme Nouhaud, 30, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. A third man, a minor at the time of the events, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

They were prosecuted for rape, habitual violence and extortion against vulnerable people. They had notably assaulted the victim in a wood near Angoulême and had extorted his bank card to finance the activities of the group of supporters. A fourth man, who was prosecuted for rape, was acquitted by the court.

During the trial, the main accused always denied the rapes despite overwhelming testimony. “He remained firm in his positions, he was incapable of recognizing the main acts,” deplores Maître Valérie Boisgard, the victim’s lawyer.

She regrets that Yann Chabernaud, described as manipulative and perverse by psychiatric expertise, pretended to be “the victim of his victim”. The anti-Semitic nature of the violence “was not recognized as an aggravating circumstance”, regrets Aude Weill-Raynal, the lawyer for the Avocats sans frontières association, a civil party to the trial.

“But we talked about it during the debates, it was present all the time. Even the defense lawyers recognized that the case was tinged with anti-Semitism,” she said. The victim’s apartment had been sprayed with swastikas and anti-Semitic insults.